


Mechanical Men

by Jacobi



Series: Black Irish Boys [5]
Category: Stucky - Fandom
Genre: Letter, M/M, after the hellicarrier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25601521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacobi/pseuds/Jacobi
Summary: So let me ask you this, pal:How could this have ended any differently? The writing was already on the wall. I’d written it enough times in your blood on my hands every time I didn’t get to those back alleys fast enough. Maybe I was tired of having your blood on my hands. I was stupid. I should have known. You bleed because it’s Tuesday. Because it Friday and the sun is out. Because you breath.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Black Irish Boys [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/865926
Kudos: 5





	Mechanical Men

Everybody’s got a chapter they won’t read out loud...  
Sometimes family ain’t our blood, it’s the people we’d bleed out for.

So let me ask you this, pal: 

How could this have ended any differently? The writing was already on the wall. I’d written it enough times in your blood on my hands every time I didn’t get to those back alleys fast enough. Maybe I was tired of having your blood on my hands. I was stupid. I should have known. You bleed because it’s Tuesday. Because it Friday and the sun is out. Because you breath. 

If you want to know the truth, I’m afraid of blood. I’m no doctor, no nurse. I patched you up the best I could, tried not to faint the best I could. I’m afraid of blood and I’m afraid of you. I was afraid of you then, of how much I loved you, of how much I’d do for you. 

So could it have gone any differently? Of course not. Don’t you know that’s why they make boys like me so pretty to look at? So they can hang us up in churches. So they can paint us as saints and call us by the same name, the same lie: heroes. I’m not a hero and I was never brave. I was just afraid. I am just afraid. I look down at my hands and one of them is silver. Sometimes I wish, terribly, to have your blood on them again. At least I knew who I was with your blood on my hands. At least that meant something. 

Lines don’t end. They go on, and on, and on forever. Sometimes I feel like my whole life is a line, one never ending collision course headed toward you. And then past you. Do you think we’ll ever intersect again? The world stood still when we did. I swear to you that was the most still I’ve ever been in my life. The most sure I’ve ever been in my life. God, but I loved you. I loved you like the child I was, wholly and completely and destructively, before the line pushed me on past you. We paralleled for a little while. Sometimes we come close to intersecting again, but don’t. 

I saw you last night (this morning?) with your hands balled in your pockets, standing in line for coffee where the haberdashery used to be. You don’t want people to see how steady your hands are. Usually it’s the opposite, and you know that, and so you don’t want people to see. You used to look at me and see all of me, all the way past my rib cage and right into my rotten, crooked heart. 

HYDRA fucked up my brain. You probably wouldn’t like talking to me, now. I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I stutter all the time over words that shouldn’t be tricky. But at least I don’t have seizures anymore. What I’m saying, is, Steve, I’m not who you need me to be anymore. You’re standing just fine on your own two feet. I watch you all the time. Probably too much. You have a good team, people who aren’t afraid of blood. Who aren’t afraid of your blood. Who aren’t afraid. 

Don’t goddamn leave me, is what you said all those years ago, but Steven Grant Rogers. Sweetheart. I was never really who you needed me to be, and it ain’t because I’m Black Irish. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, in between trying to remember and trying to forget. I loved you then, and I love you now, and in your own way, you loved me too. The lines of me, anyway. The good parts. But you need somebody who’s going to stay. You need somebody who won’t bleed out for you. 

I’m learning now that relationships need self control. Reasonability. I’m impulsive and unreasonable, and that’s one thing brain damage didn’t change. It’s why I’m writing you this. I love you so much through all the centuries that it makes me sick to my teeth in every single one. I promise you, you do not need that in your life. 

I don’t know if I’m staying yet or going yet. It depends on how I feel when I wake up, or maybe if I see three red raincoats in a row, or maybe if it doesn’t rain at all. Please do not pray for me or to me, no matter how many times my face looks down at you from stain glass windows. I’m not a saint. I never was. I never will be. I’ve been sinning since the moment I met you. If you want to know the truth, I am probably closer to the devil than a god, and I have a feeling your own mother would agree. Black Irish boys, after all, are only good for busting lips and breaking hearts. 

Steve crumpled the letter in his hands. Bucky was right there- he was right. There. But he wasn’t. Steve couldn’t find him because Bucky didn’t want to be found. The thing that stood out most glaringly about the letter was that Bucky’s handwriting was exactly the same, even though he lost his left arm. It made Steve wonder, how different are men from machines, after all?


End file.
